History of Monsters. 449

...with three teeth, she emerged from her mother's womb. In our own age, we also observed a boy with perfectly formed limbs, though somewhat larger than usual, who was born with four teeth. Indeed, those who possessed a continuous bone instead of teeth ought to inspire even greater wonder in us; for among his memorable accounts, Cardano mentions a noblewoman in the household of the Prince of Luxembourg who had a double bone in place of teeth.

However, these cases seem of no significance compared to the accounts that follow regarding the defective and disfigured heads of fetuses. At times, some are born with a "Thersitical" head, which brings both fear and amazement to those who behold it.

Thersites was a certain Greek man, as described by Homer, whom no one could imagine to be more deformed. For this reason, we currently refer to a head that is misshapen and defiled by various marks as "Thersitical," as the reader can observe in Figure I. Indeed, in the year 1554, as Lycosthenes reported, a child was born in Stettin who, through various bodily agitations and cries, seemed to resist the priest as he was about to cleanse him at the sacred baptismal font. But the priest, after offering prayers to God, dipped the boy into the holy water.

The boy had a mass of flesh on the crown of his head resembling the shape of a red tortoise, and toward his neck, a long, fleshy tail like that of a sea-creature; his head was Thersitical, and his eyes were bulging.

We must also mention here the boy born in Venice in the year 1487, who had a genital member growing from the top of his head. Because of this obscenity, his parents did not dare to bring him out in public. But even more remarkable was a boy recently born in the territory of Modena with testicles and a scrotum full of urine attached to the back of his head. Consequently, a surgeon called in to remove this deformity immediately cut away the protrusion with great skill. While he expected the boy to make a full recovery with the application of suitable remedies, the infant died shortly thereafter from suppressed urine. From this, it was understood that these superfluous parts attached to the back of the head shared a significant connection with the other genital parts and the bladder.

II. We include an illustration of a boy with an obscene face who, according to Lycosthenes, was born in Freiburg in the year 1550. He had a hard, prominent mass of flesh around his forehead and the back of his head, which disfigured the entire head of this otherwise well-formed fetus. A monstrous boy was not dissimilar in the mass of flesh on his forehead, which grew like a horn; a description of him was kindly shared with us by the most distinguished Joannes Augustus Cucchius, a highly experienced soldier of the medical arts and a great seeker of truth. This boy was born in Bologna on the Via San Felice in April of 1630, shortly before the plague began to spread in the following month. This infant had all parts of his body appropriately formed and established except for his head, where a horn composed of flesh occupied the middle of his forehead. Only a single eye socket with one large eye could be seen on the face, and there was no nose. The opening of the mouth was round and so narrow that he could not take his nurse's breast; instead, for the sake of nourishment, milk was dripped in through a tube fitted to the small opening.

Long ago in Germany, specifically in the year 1512, in a village named Elceffelbach, a child was born to a peasant’s wife with an extremely narrow mouth. Furthermore, the entire face resembled a mass of flesh, in the center of which sat the likeness of a dagger formed from that same flesh. Beneath this mass of flesh, large and dissimilar eyes were located. Because of this deformity, he was not cleansed with the water of the sacred font, but was buried alive.

From the obscenity of these heads, we must not overlook that monster born in the city of Fermo in Italy in the year 1624. She was a girl with perfect limbs, except for her head, which was horrific to behold, with a wrinkled forehead under which certain sockets could be seen without eyes. In place of a nose, a pear-shaped piece of flesh occupied the middle of the face, and beneath this mass of flesh was a rectangular patch of red skin which, on both sides, re-